BY DAN CAROL
Go Green, Obama
Strategist advises New Deal
for energy efficiency
Dear Senator Obama:
Yes, it’s great that you are winning the money race
with record numbers of small donors, but you won’t
have a truly great presidential campaign until you
deliver a message that does more than make the call
for hope. In my experience, Americans are desper-
ately seeking to embrace a signature idea that
involves them directly in fixing their communities.
Voters and non-voters alike want to know more about
how they literally can roll up their sleeves and join in a new,
Habitat-for-Humanity-style project of national renewal.
You seemed to hint at all that in your Springfield announcement speech, but so far
you haven’t told us what we can do other than wait for your election or write you a
check. We’re yearning for more.
Now I get that your campaign team is wisely trying to avoid the mistakes of
Democratic campaigns past. No disagreement from me (www.americanprogressac-
tion.org/issues/2004/dear_john.html) that we need to avoid debates over dry policy
plans which fail to engage voters at the deep, emotional, gut level we need to tap.
My gut says that the answer lies in marrying a call to national service to energy
efficiency and independence — getting young and old, union worker and apprentice,
city and rural, black and brown and white, retrofitting a new America and busy cre-
ating the jobs and industries of tomorrow. This is hardly a new idea, but no one yet
owns the idea in this campaign. To own it you need to bet big and go all in, Texas
hold-’em style.
‘My gut says that the answer lies in marrying
a call to national service to energy
efficiency and independence.’
People want the whole enchilada — new federal R&D and clean energy earmarks
in every Congressional district, national service to weatherize the 13 million homes
that remain eligible for federal assistance (many in inner cities) — and I’ll even bet
Americans would reach into their pockets and buy freedom bonds to invest even more
if they knew the jobs created would stay at home.
I don’t really care what you call it. Call it Project Hope. A Green New Deal as Tom
Friedman does. A green corps to rival FDR’s civilian conservation corps in a new cen-
tury. A new Apollo project. Renew America. Operation Iraqi Freedom. The What-
Else-We-Need-To-Do-After-We-Buy-A-Prius-12-Step-Nutri-System. Or honestly I’ll
(even) Take Manhattan. As in Project. That’s your marketing team’s call.
But I won’t take no for an answer because mark my words, your failure to deliver
a compelling and big idea will cost you the election.
So what’s the hold-up to giving Americans what they’ve been craving for?
Could it be that the hurdle to moving forward lies in your own campaign’s struc-
ture? With all due respect, I worry you may be repeating the fatal flaw that the Kerry
campaign made in 2004 by creating silo-ed “policy groups” and treating the energy
issue as a separate issue rather than as a centerpiece of a smart war on terror and win-
ning economics.
Understand in your gut, as voters already do, that all of these issues are connected.
Otherwise you will be stuck, as you are right now, in wonky debates within your
campaign apparatus and in the public sphere over whose CAFÉ standard is better in
2018 or whether an 80 percent or 90 perent carbon cut by 2050 is enough, or
whether we can afford more federal spending, or if we should subsidize Detroit or
any of the dinosaur industries that will never be the leaders until their competitors
from the renewable side are given the level playing fields and the markets they need
to compete.
Like I said, voters’ eyes glaze over when they hear about this stuff.
Voters draw closer when you explain how we can create a new America — with
our own hands, from downtown Detroit to the sprawl of Las Vegas.
What will it take to be unassailable to the serious policy crowd and the editorial
writers? My recommended benchmark will be specific investment commitments —
basically an Iraq War’s worth (say $400-500 billion) — as well as caps and targets.
We can nerd out on the details another time, but this isn’t anywhere near the zone of
political suicide — in fact, you can let others lead the call for carbon taxes and instead
offer up a smart mix of federal investment, tax and subsidy shifts, loan guarantees and
capital account budgeting to pay for the program, drive economic growth and satisfy
both Bob Rubin budget hawks and Al Gore. Voters meanwhile will love it: They’ll
hear you say you want to invest billions in our communities and create millions of
American jobs. Set and match.
Political strategist Dan Carol is a former DNC staffer and co-founder of the Apollo Alliance. A longer version of
this commentary can be found at the huffingtonpost.com website.
4 JULY 19, 2007
TO THE EDITOR
TAKE THAT, MATT GROENING!
I have been a fan of the television show
The Simpsons since the first season (when I
was in elementary school). Though the
quality of the show has dropped off (and
this is pretty much undisputed by everyone
except the show’s writers), I actually was
excited by the prospect of a Simpsons
movie. Such a film has been rumored for
over a decade.
It seemed obvious that Springfield, Ore.,
would be chosen as the location of the
film’s premiere. One only has to visit
Portland and see Flanders, Lovejoy,
Quimby and Terwilliger to immediately
understand Matt Groening’s love of
Oregon. If you research further, more and
more evidence piles up for Eugene and
Springfield, including, of course, Principal
Skinner, named after Eugene Skinner,
founder of our fair city.
And yet, Springfield, Vt., will hold the
film’s premiere. Could there be a place less
like the Simpsons’ hometown than
Springfield, Vt.? This is such a colossal
missed opportunity that I don’t intend on
buying a ticket to see the movie in its true
hometown, Springfield, Ore.
This will easily be the worst premiere
ever.
Peter Fehrs
Eugene
PROSTITUTES RULE
When Republicans held control of
Congress in the 1990s, they had occasion-
al sex scandals with prostitutes and father-
ing children out of wedlock. But by 2006,
Republican morality had sunk to a new
low with conservatives like Reverend Ted
Haggard having gay sex on methampheta-
mines and Republican Congressman Mark
Foley trying to have gay sex with under-
age boys.
But now Republican Senator David
Vitter has publicly apologized after his
phone number was linked to being a client
of an alleged Washington prostitution ring.
What this means is that Republicans are
making a moral comeback, moving from
gay sex with boys on drugs to adult hetero-
sexual sex with female prostitutes. This
shows that Republicans have reversed
course and are now heading back in the
right direction. If this trend continues, they
might start talking about getting out of Iraq
and balancing the federal budget.
I’m Marc Perkel, and I approved this
message!
Marc Perkel
San Bruno, Calif.
WE’RE NO MOTOR CITY
The traffic congestion in Eugene and in
Lane County will only get worse because
our planning department and local gover-
ment are catering to it. The more freeways,
huge highways and commuter roads that
they put in, the worse it will get. They are
inviting more traffic and commuters to
come in because they are “improving” the
highways for this.
We are going to become Detroit, which
did exactly the same thing, and all the
business left the area, because it could not
function there. Detroit is now a slum. The
only “cure” is to STOP and discourage all
freeway, highway, etc. improvement and
development. If no one believes that, go
ahead, investigate the history of Detroit,
how it got that way and what happened.
You’ll be looking at the future of Eugene
and Lane County.
dh bucher
Eugene
FAMILY DEATH DECISIONS
During the time I have spent at
Greenhill, I have had the pleasure of being
part of a team that truly, honestly cares
about what they do. We are a family.
There is no divide between “manage-
ment” and “kennel staff.” We are not “ham-
strung” by policies we don’t agree with. We
are not out of the loop, ignored or unin-
formed. We spend our lives at the shelter;
we see the dogs every day. We feed them,
clean their kennels and take care of them